In episode 12 of the Sports Geek Podcast we chat with Tod Caflisch from Detroit Red Wings on how IT is playing a big role in sports performance analytics and stadium activation. We catch up with Trendsmap.com’s John Barratt to understand how Trendsmap works and look behind the scenes of #ALvMU Sports Trendsmapbuilt for the A-League All-Stars game against Manchester United. On Harf Time we discuss how Sydney Thunder used traditional and digital media to welcome Mr Cricket as a new Big Bash League signing.

#ALvMU Case Study from SlideShare

Podcast transcription

Sean: DJ: Welcome to Episode 12 of the Sports Geek podcast presented by SEAT Conference on today’s episode, we will chat with good mate Tod Caflisch from Detroit Red Wings, John Barratt from Trendsmap.com, and look at how Sydney Thunder used a combination of traditional and digital media to welcome Mr. Cricket.

DJ Joel: Welcome to the Sports Geek Podcast. The Podcast built for sports, digital, and sports business professionals. And now here’s your host who is now wearing only one custom Sports Geek Adidas Sean Callanan.

Sean: Thanks DJ Joel, name is Sean Callanan from Sports Geek. If you are a first time listener, thank you very much for tuning in. Please send me a tweet @SeanCallanan and let me know that you are listening. You can always access the show notes for this show at Sportsgeekhq.com/12, the number 12. You can access the episodes from all previous episodes with the same way. With over 3300 downloads, I’m very grateful of everyone whose tuned in and supported the podcast.

A packed show for today, we chat with John Barratt now from Trendsmap.com to look at the sports Trendsmap Activation we did with Manchester United A-League All Stars Game. And have a look at the stats behind that. And also later around we’ll chat with Harf on SEN about the Sydney Thunder’s big signing of Mr. Cricket in the big bash league.

But first proud to have SEAT Conference on as a sponsor and our presenting partner of this Sports Geek Podcast. I’m flying out next Friday to Kansas City, and so we are going to kick off the discussion with a good mate of mine Tod Caflisch from the Detroit Red Wings looking at the importance of the rise of IT in sports and how it’s affecting things like sports analytics as well as in stadium. So here’s our discussion with Francis Leach on ABC Grandstand.

Recording: ABC Grandstand sports coverage like no other.

Francis: Welcome to Saturday morning Francis Leach and I love to catch up to Sean Callanan and the Digital Sports Guru. He talks sport in the digital space with us on a Saturday morning. Each week Sports Geek HQ is where you can usually find him. Good day, Sean.
Sean: Good day, Francis. How are you doing?

Francis: Not too bad, the digital crutches are out still. We’ve haven’t been able to shake those just yet with the Achilles injury.

Sean: Getting there, starting to put a little bit of weight on it. So starting to get around.

Francis: Now you are heading off next week to the big daddy of sports tech conferences to SEAT. Tell me what that is.

Sean: Yeah so SEAT stands for Sports Entertainment Alliance and Technology. So it would be really good for meeting of sports IT executives in the CEO space. That’s where the conference started and that’s where it was the genesis of. So, seven years ago, but also last year in Boston it expanded also to include the CRM guys. We’ve had a few of those guys on the show talking about the way they are slicing and dicing the data and getting a bit of access to customers. And also the social and the digital space that we attract for that as well.

So it’s a good discussion to have everyone be able to go and learn all the different things in the different tracks. And then it’s also great to have all of those key stakeholders to get up, try and solve the same problems because normally there is a tendency for some of that relationship to be adversarial. You know the IT guy wants this, the marketing guy wants this, the sales and the social guys want this. It’s good to be able to present where there’s been solutions where they’ve all worked together and how it’s worked together because really the marketing guys want all access and need the tech to be able to implement what they want to do. And then so the tech guys, are the guys that are going to be able to roll it out. So yeah there’s going to be representatives from all the pro sports, also from place like NASCAR, and also the NCAA where there is lots of colleges trying to activate this sports programs and stuff like that.

Francis: So many Australians across to this?

Sean: I mean yeah I think there is. I think there will be a few Australians. I think the guys from ANZ Stadium are going to be there and a few others. So this, we have been talking to Christine. I think there are few coming from Australia, all the way over to Kansas City.

Francis: Great place to be too, good old Kansas City. And an opportunity to maybe to learn from some of these stadium experiences in particular which more highly geared towards the fan experience, and the opportunity to use to the digital space around sports events around. Because we still talk about this regularly, still a little bit behind in providing capacity of the MCG on Wednesday night. 90,000 people there, everybody wanted to send a photo of themselves holding up a red scarf and singing “You will never walk alone”. Nobody could get into the exits.

Sean: No, no this is exactly, exactly right. So we are going to be . . . I’ll be lucky enough to go to a game at Sporting KC, formally Luke Strong Park. It’s now Sporting Park. And I have discussed this before, it is one of the most picked up stadiums there is, and it helps there is a Google epicenter for Kansas City is right nearby. But some of the things they got from a technology point of view of allowing you to have that in-seat ordering. You know connected to the stadium, having the Wi-Fi, so I am really looking forward to one, going to a game and see what the experience is like. But then getting a bit of a tour behind the scenes, and seeing what they are doing from a point of view of digital signage. Those kinds of things.

Francis: We are going to speak someone. I’m going to meet someone now who is basically working in that area to try and enhance the fan experience both in-stadium and as a game day ends, and the preparation for the next game begins.

Sean: Yes so I think we got a, Tod Caflisch on the line who is the Director of IT at the Detroit Red Wings. Good day, Tod.

Tod: Hey, how are you guys doing?

Francis: We are well mate, just in terms of first I would like to know is from a perspective of different sports, how does it the NHL differentiate itself in terms of the fan experience with social from there other sports? They have sort of like a generic approach to it.

Tod: I wouldn’t say such a generic approach. Really a lot of that responsibility falls on the teams. The NHL has kind of been out there in front kind of prodding the teams along but it’s really kind of up to the teams to do that. And we’re working on a lot of those initiatives here in Detroit with the Wings and as far as, very heavily involved in social media. Very successfully pushing the brand out there and working on projects that are going to expand our abilities to give people that enriched fan experience for our Red Wings home games.

Sean: Tod, you’ve been in the IT game and in the sports scene with for a long time now. What’s some of things from the rise of the importance of IT? We were chatting earlier in the week around this sport analytics and some of the things that have to be brought into stadiums now to help the coaches with all these performance metrics and things like that. What are some of the things that you’ve had to implement from a stadium point of view to support that kind of advances in the technology in the sports science side?

Tod: Well, there is a lot of that staring to really go on and the NBA is doing a lot of it. I kind of brought that to the Red Wings here. I don’t think it’s very wide spread in the NHL yet but really it boils down to trying to better build rosters, especially with issues of salary cap, looking for kind of those diamond in the rough people and just doing the metrics on performance whether it’s vertical leap, or hand eye coordination and foot speed, and that sort of stuff. It’s really analyzing those kind of basic things along with some others that help differentiate the different competitors and there’s a lot of them out there that the teams, coaches and scouts have to evaluate.

Sean: So yeah we are seeing in the AFL at least a lot of the players run around the park, the oval, if you will, with a little GPS monitor on the back of their jerseys to track how far they are running. In the NBA, they got similar systems where they set up tracking devices from a video point of view. And is that something that you think that the NHL can sort of use to see how people are scoring from the left wing or how the interchanges are happening?

Tod: Absolutely applicable I know that the, there is a couple companies out there that they are working on exactly that. Using video optics that are pushed through software filters that will measure practically everything and one specifically that has been used in the NBA for the last few seasons. I mean can tell you everything from exactly physically where on a basketball court through an entire game to the actual miles per hour let’s say.

I know couple years ago they tested it in Boston with the Celtics and during a playoff game Rajon Rondo stole the ball and they were able to calculate that in his run to the basket for a steal and layup, he got up to like 19 miles an hour. That kind of thing, measuring tendencies where players will spend time on the court physically so that way you can build better offensive plans or defense schemes knowing really what kind of what teams or specific players’ tendencies are. It’s all really kind of cool stuff. I mean that system specifically was designed out of what was originally missile tracking systems for Department of Defense.

Sean: One of the things we’ve found and these stats are growing all the time and from a digital department where it’s a content base. We are always trying to produce more content for the fans. Some of those stats are just cool as sports fans to know how fast Rajon Rondo is. Or seeing heat maps of where certain players are always shooting from and things like that.

But the battle that we find is as this information becomes more accessible from I guess a team operations, the coach’s point of view, the less likely they want to share it. Like they start treating this as this might be the secret source and if the opposition gets a hold of it, we don’t want that to go out.

So do you find as they get analytics start coming at the team, there’s a bit of a fight, a bit of a push and pull between the coaching staff who value this data and its affect with this money ball operation. They try to find that next big thing or this sort of way of doing it. And the digital department to say our fans would love that and infographic or putting it up on a big screen and how fast our players are running.

Tod: Yeah and there’s a lot of push and pull like that because there are some teams that are doing a whole lot with that where the coaches are very into the digital analytics and measuring all that stuff. Others aren’t so much but really it’s among all the leagues. NFL does a lot of that with their own . . . A lot of them have their own programmers on staff doing a lot of proprietary stuff. Really when it all comes down to it, I mean they are all doing a lot of the same thing just in specific ways really kind of I guess tailored to the coaches and scouts preferences.

The neat thing about the data is that there are a lot applicable pieces of it that marketing and social media can use as fun facts. Trivial kind of stuff that they can sell to partners to build revenue on the business side as well. So I think really the key is kind of the IT guy that’s sort of I guess mediates both sides and makes it all work really smoothly. I mean that’s been kind of my goal as an IT guy and sports business is not be, a propeller head all the time but you can also be a salesman and a marketer kind of minded guy and see where you there are opportunities to leverage data and systems to build revenue as well as build competitive advantage on the ice or the court or wherever it might be.

Sean: Well Todd I am looking forward to seeing in Kansas City. One last question, I was in the news this week, the Madison Square Garden has just finished a renovation. You’ve gone through some renovations. They spent $968 million in renovating Madison Square Garden, and New York has just issued them with an eviction notice. They have to be out in ten years. What do you think the reaction is going to be at Madison Square Garden after putting in all that hard work to upgrade the stadium?

Tod: I was really kind of shocked to see that and I don’t know all the details of it. I am sure it will probably end up in the courts for years and years and nothing will much change. I mean the Madison Square Garden is an icon of New York City. I don’t necessarily see that changing any time soon, especially with investment that they’ve made over the last few years in upgrading that building. It may force them to build an entirely different new completely state of the art building, facility but there is still so much tradition in that place that I think it’s going to be interesting to see how it all kind of plays out.

Francis: Sports fans in Australia will be very sad. I think that it might be there for them to visit sometime in the future. Tod we really appreciate your time and enjoy safe with our mate, Sean Callanan.

Tod: Good enough.

Sean: Thanks mate.

Tod: Thanks, guys. I look forward to seeing you, Sean in KC.

Sean: Cheers.

Francis: Tod Caflisch there Director of IT at the Detroit Red Wings. Sean Callanan, the Sports Guru, Sports HQ. Sports Geek HQ is where you find him. Thanks, Sean.

Sean: Cheers mate.

DJ Joel: We will see you in Kansas City for SEAT 2013. You got to be there mate!

Sean: Thanks again to Tod Caflisch for joining us on ABC Grandstand very much looking forward to the SEAT Conference. As they are the presenting partner of the Sports Geek Podcast. If you haven’t booked, there’s still time. I know Christine and Chris are furiously getting the conference ready, but they would be more than happy to have a few more attendees. Simply go to Sportsgeekhq.com/seat2013. Check out the agenda and register. We would love to see you there. I will be presenting digital case studies with Philippe Dore from NASCAR.

We’ve actually got a list of cool sports digital activations we have to cut down, but more than happy to have a few more to choose from. If you got an activation that you’ve done over the past 12 months in the digital space. It doesn’t matter what platform, please send me an email Sean@sportsgeekhq.com, more than happy to include it in the slide deck.

I am also looking forward to catching up with the folks of Madison Square Garden. With that news they’ve been given the ten year eviction notice. So very impressed with what Katie, John and Sean have done from the renovation story from last year. Now that it’s complete I was looking forward to hearing about it. I’m sure they will have plenty to say on that eviction notice.

As discussed on last weeks’ show we launched Sports Trendsmap with the A-League All Star Game playing Man United at ANZ stadium. The game was a big success and we had some great feedback from both the A-League and FFA and how the activation went. So I caught up with John Barratt from Trendsmap to discuss a little bit about it.

Sean: So first of all welcome John, you are the brains behind Trendsmap.com and welcome to the Sports Geek Podcast.

John: Thanks Sean thanks for having me.

Sean: All right so last week we had a pretty successful launch for sports Trendsmap with the A-League and Manchester United it was a unique experience sort of tracking the tweets from the game and seeing the impact that Man United was having on all things Twitter. But do want to give us a little background on how you started Trendsmap?

John: Yeah Trendsmap was originally spawned out of an idea just over four years ago now to literally do something with tweets and locations. It actually came of a company that I was working for at the time called Stateless Systems. At the time there wasn’t really much being done with tweets and location but it was thought it was something unique that could be done given the huge amount of data Twitter was generating, even back then. There were many, many millions of tweets. So we started looking at what we can do and to not only locating tweets but also in generating trends. And it sort of grew from there, had a bit of background in maps and then we looked at putting them on a map. And then making them interactive, being able to zoom in and out and bring up. Things like live tweets relating to topics any part of the world.

Sean: So you really very much embedded in the geological location space, geo-location sort of had its fits and starts. Four Square had a big boom there for awhile then it sort of plateaued to a certain degree. Facebook had a really good crack at it. One question I’ve had from a geolocation, always has that security nature to it. You can geotag your tweets but if you are geotagging your tweets and it is one of those things I advise all my athlete clients to do is turn off geotagging because eventually everyone will know where they live if they are tweeting from their couch. So how do you get around that problem of not everyone using geotag? How does Trendsmap know where tweets are coming from?

John: So we actually use a few different methods. Overall there is around two percent of all tweets that do actually have a geotag turned on. So that’s sort of the first protocol and that’s the easy data to collect because that comes along with all the other information in the tweet. And for countries like Australia, that’s typically a latitude and longitude value so we can pretty precisely locate that. So if someone’s got that turned on and is game and tweet about it, then you can almost work out what chair they are sitting in, in the stadium.

But because it’s only a small percentage that sort of limits the usefulness of it. Most of the way which you can locate tweets is based upon the profile location. So when people sign up they get asked their location and most people will put in something like Melbourne, Australia or possibly in just Australia. It turns out that you can take that text and what we call geo-coding of that, and turn that into a latitude and longitude. And so for the most part that allows you to get to around sea level. Around 40 percent of all tweets can be geo-located that way.

There are few other tricks of the trade that in some cases allow you to go a bit further and in some topics you will actually get better information from the location of people have. Because people around certain topics will use . . . will not be so silly with their locations. Some people put “at your back door” or “under the sea”, and all sorts of silly things. And they don’t tend to come up to be actual location.

Sean: So from a point of view, it’s pretty similar to what I guess what Twitter can find out about if you’ve ever dived into the Twitter analytics now that most accounts have access to their Twitter analytics. You know the top city will come up pretty much. It will pretty much be profile based. I am actually looking at an account right now that’s pretty much saying Melbourne07au and MelbourneVIau so there is still a bit of clean up from Twitter’s point of view of identifying that they both reside in the same city.

From a point a view geo-location, finding out where their tags are. So just want to dive into some of the stats and what we saw from the A-League Man U game. I’m looking at the back end dashboard of analysis of the stuff behind the scenes. We had just a tick over 10,000 tweets come through for about 3800 different users. And the good thing from a back end point of view, and I was producing some of the content of the guys of A-League to share throughout the night. Is I was able to tell them that Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide in that order were the top tweeting cities from Australia that were tweeting during the match. And you are able to dive in and affectively dive into Sydney and find out what were the key terms from that.

What we did find and I have spoken about it previously on the Sports Geek Podcast, that Man United still relatively new to Twitter. Unfortunately, despite the A-League saying this is the match day hashtag they pretty much were insistent they were going to use MU Tour so, we launched the Trendsmap on the Friday and was pretty much well populated with data because the way Trendsmap works you can sort of span different periods of data so you can either go for a week or down to hours.

Do you just want to sort of go through our decision to make sure that we had a map that had enough Man United and enough A-League? We decided to effective start injecting some of the MU Tour tweets and some of the decisions we had to make on the fly in the fact that we can in Sports Trendsmap, track multiple terms as our, would you call them the pivot points of the map. Because that was the sort of things that or is it anchor points of how the maps are put together.

John: Yes so, the whole basis of I suppose the core data that you use to then generate the displays, is based upon a filter or selection for tweets. And obviously the hashtag of MU is very unique and specific to the match. So in the lead up we were able to use that has the primary source of tweets. Now it wasn’t a huge amount of chatting going on, but spanning over a week, it aggregated into a nice amount. It was lots of chatter particularly coming out of the A-League account and fans around the place were starting to get excited about the match. So it was a bit of content being generated in terms of images, videos, vines included that provided interesting display.

Sean: And so . . .

John: Sorry.

Sean: Yeah and so we were able to bubble up that content that was the key pictures that were being shared from training and that kind of thing. And the vines that Brian was taking from the A-League account was again getting bubbled up and people can consume them and in the Sports Trendsmap, if I saw it and it was profiling our profile users. So A-League, Man United obviously things like ANZ Stadium, Seven sport, and even the SPS guys because they were obviously really tied in with football. And in some of the small secondary players whether they help players on the pitch and also journalists were also being profiled.

John: Yeah and so because Manchester United were on a tour, there was a lot of talk about hashtagging MU Tour, which is the official tag that we were using with regard to other matches both past and upcoming. So in order to not pollute this data with relevant stuff, well not relevant with respect in the sport. Not obvious specific to this game, we waited to the actual day of the match to then start including hash MU Tour tags. So from before the game until just after we are collecting data for both [ALvMU] and MU Tour.

Sean: Yeah.

John: Indeed if there are any other official accounts that are specific to that match during that time period then they can be included to get the best picture possible for the event you are tracking.

Sean: Yeah and so the other thing that we did, from a game day point of view, and sort of just keeping sort of a brand protection point of view for the A-League was the use of stop wards dashboard that’s in the back end of Trendsmap to be able to remove particular keywords that were trending just of a byproduct of being related to those key hashtags. So we were able to remove gambling operators that were trying to promote gambling options for the game as they weren’t official partners and a few people doing retweet competitions for soccer roos gear, and A-League gear that again were just trying to piggy back if I could say it properly.

So there was a bit of ambush marketing happening so we were able to remove those from the map. Which is an advantageous to the A-League and the other part of it was pretty much serving up some of the content to allow the fans to know that here’s what the top tweets were. This is what the heat map looks like.

I think the only other thing that we saw because we had this sort of David and Goliath battle with Man United even though it’s still new Twitter. Such a big, presence and everything they would do would get retweeted when we started pushing those MU Tour tweets. Obviously Man United and if you look at it now still dominate the top tweets on the board there.

I think going forward if we are in sort of that match up mode, of a specific match we might split out those two boards. And effectively say here’s the top Man United related tweets. And here’s the top A-League related tweets, and because we have all that back data in the back ends that’s relatively easy and flexible from a what we can show the users in that front end product, isn’t it?

John: Yeah and it’s certainly a lot of flexibility in the way its sliced and particularly you noticed in that example what Man United and certainly dominated the content during the match. But we were able to bring that in and the other thing that was interesting was that obviously there are a lot of fans around the world, and in particularly Melbourne. Sydney was still, obviously that’s where the match was being played but Sydney was still the top tweeting city for the match.

Normally for the soccer matches, particular Socceroos, you typically see Melbourne ranking a bit higher than Sydney. And not so surprising when Manchester was third in line. But what gets interesting from there is Jakarta was fourth. So it really gives you insight into the fan base as well, where they actually are and whose following it. It’s been quite amazing to see how bright Indonesia has been. It’s certainly one of the largest and fastest growing Twitter nations in the [work world]. That’s a huge uptake of smart phone usage in Indonesia with Twitter capabilities.

Sean: And the other thing that we didn’t get to dive into but again it’s available in the back end is once you do have the information whether it be, here’s the top users, here’s the top cities, you can then filter on that data. So you can go on and potentially click on the mentions of potentially Seven Sport who were covering the match, and see related hashtags around that match. It might be people talking about the match using the Seven Sport hashtag or talking about Fango, or you can see all the different top users so it would have been the talent on the TV. So it does give you different views of the data, so I think that’s the other opportunity coming out of Sports Trendsmap is the content pieces that you can provide out of the game. Just to give you that different representation of the content.

So it was really good to see it live and see some of the data coming thru. I mean the feedback from the guys at the FFA and A- League were, they really love the way it looked and the fan feedback was really good. But I think we definitely got a some ideas to tweak it going forward whether it be that in event style like this match or even a club-based, brand-based version of this to be able to integrate a bit more of sponsors involved because really we pretty much went with a wide labeled fan engagement one where we didn’t have any sponsors involved but there is obviously options in there to put sponsor branding throughout the Trendsmap.

John: Yeah it can be done at so many different levels. Sort of following a team throughout the season on an ongoing basis, a team during a match, an actual match from the point of view of both teams, obviously a point of view of the league, albeit the league as a whole or individual teams or different ways. You can slice so many different ways and also by location you start to see things like where the fan bases are. What [seats] are they [wanting] than others and who’s really getting behind the team to win?

Sean: All right, John, thank you very much for joining us and look forward to working with you again on the next Sports Trendsmap.

Sean: If you want more info on Sports Trendsmap, I’ve included a short case study on the ALvMU in the show notes, at SportsGeekhq.com/12 or you can go to sportsgeekhq.com/sportstrendsmap. We think it fits for individual teams, leagues or major [one off] events. Thanks to Shane Harmon the noise you can here underneath is from the game and he just catches as Robin Vinpersey scores the final goal of the match.

So for our final segment on the podcast we chat with Daniel Harford from 1116 SEN, as always AZN Stadium, a couple days after the Manchester United A-League All Stars game to help the Sydney Thunder in the Big Bash League kick off what was the signings week where they are able to introduce Mr. Cricket.

Daniel: We have a Wednesday when a Sean comes in to help us with a world of social digital media sports stuff. He is the Sportsgeekhq.com man who is back again. Good day, Sean.

Sean: Good day, how are you doing?

Daniel: Going very well, you were in your Sydney Thunder hoodie today. Now that’s game considering there were no good last year but they had a big addition during the week.

Sean: Yeah, yeah so I was up there on Monday and they signed Mr. Cricket himself, Mike Hussey has signed with the Thunder. So pretty much while I was there it was just sort of help oversee all things digital.

Daniel: Yep.

Sean: And it really just shows that you really want to integrate everything you are doing. So we’re most of the publicity and stuff was coming from TV, they had him coming on a chopper.

Daniel: I saw that.

Sean: And they did a bit of a tour. So yep, you saw that it went on the news. So they had all the news crews there and we are obviously using . . . we sent out an email campaign to all the members that early in the morning. It was in the papers Richard Hinds first article with the Daily Tele.

Daniel: Yep.

Sean: I was with Mike Hussey so it’s just about integrating it sort of across the day. At 12 o’clock the chopper arrived and had all the news crews there. Channel 10 obviously got a big slice of it because they are running all the big bad shows on it.

Daniel: Of course.

Sean: So they were looking forward to it and it’s going to be an action packed commentary box in there, if they get the guys from the commentary box on the field more people will be watching. Because they got Gilly and Vive and Potter.

Daniel: Oh Vive is doing it too?

Sean: Vive is in

Daniel: How do flaming and Mark Waugh as well.

Sean: Yeah, yeah so he is pretty much anyone inside the willow in the last 20 years is going to be in the box sometime. If we had the Channel 10 team versus the Channel 9 team I think that the Channel 10 team would wipe the floor with them. But yeah so there was a lot of that, then when all the press guys got their coverage and there was a bit of banter backwards and forwards with the guys that are scorchers because everyone in Australia was a little bit displeased with Mike going.

Daniel: Okay.

Sean: But the idea behind the Big Bash is that it doesn’t have that sort of allegiance anymore franchise like the AFL, the NRL and that kind of thing. So there is a bit more freedom of movement of guys. And then the day wrapped up us telling everybody tune into the news and they did live cross with the Tim Bailey doing the weather on the Channel 10 News. So it was a long day but I must say I was following along with the crutches and Mr. Cricket, what a tough bloke. We had to get in the carriers and that’s all right, mate. You hop in the front seat. I will be all right in the back.

Daniel: Oh Mr. Cricket is giving you the front.

Sean: Oh what a good bloke he is so.

Daniel: Good man.

Sean: He pretty much answered every question about the Thunder and pretty much second question was so when are you coming back from the ashes? He was pretty much, he played it straight bet. He’s quite happy in retirement.

Daniel: What we are seeing in a lot of activation, a lot of announcements about the Big Bash this week.

Sean: Yeah.

Daniel: The last couple days in particular. How big of a sport will it be digitally do you think?

Sean: I think the fact that and this is where I think TV is the big thing. Like I think the Fox sell guys did a really good job with the Big Bash’s first two seasons, and now it’s going to be free where so it’s going to be more accessible to more people. I mean subscription TV right in Australia is around 25 to 30 percent so not everyone. I have Fox, you have Fox, but not everyone does.

Daniel: Yep.

Sean: So it’s going to be far more accessible to more people and if Channel 10 sort of allowed the digital allowed people to have that chatter and talking on Twitter and a bit of integration, like that kind of stuff, I think it’s going to go gangbusters in a similar way that if you want to look back in the past what Channel 10 coverage of the NBL did all those years ago when it was on primetime. It really gathered a spike so I think it’s going to be a great fit, Channel 10, There’s going to be a lot cricket on Channel 10 over the summer but it’s either that or the Simpsons repeats so. It’s going to be good for everyone.

Daniel: Well it’s 50-50 of which one I am going to see.

Sean: So yeah it will be great for the Big Bash. There should be a lot of coverage of it and potentially that will flow onto digital but really the idea was to get people to the games. So the fact that people will have more access to it and start knowing the names because yeah there is a lot of names that people don’t know. A lot of these younger guys that are just playing Big Bash that really state crickets or under, we really want to make sure that more people know about them.

Daniel: Well I certainly will do have followed you at sportgeekhq.com because you are all over this sort of stuff. There is no surprise that Huss has ended up at the Sydney Thunder when he knew that you worked there. Well then.

Sean: It’s certainly not like that.

Daniel: Well then I am landing on the deal. It’s good to see you, mate. I look forward to your company soon.

Sean: Okay, cheers man.

DJ Joel: Like the Sports Geek Podcast? Find us on Facebook.com/SportsGeek.

Sean: That’s it for another Sports Geek Podcast. I’ve hope you’ve enjoyed this one and if you did, please share it on Twitter and LinkedIn. A special bonus sounds of the game episode this week, as Liverpool came to town and 95,000 people filled the MCG and sang “You Will Never Walk Alone”. Absolutely spine tingling stuff and so stay tuned after the credits.

Thank you to my Uncle Marty for sending it through as well as Brian Gibson from the FFA. Again send in those audio clips, I am looking forward to having one from the Kansas City Royals game and also Sporting KC from Kansas City from next week from SEAT Conference, so next week’s show will be live from SEAT Conference in Kansas City. If you are not going to be there be sure to follow the hashtag #SEAT2013, and if you are attending get those tweeting fingers ready as we want to make sure those non-attendees will have a severe case of FOMO. Fear of missing out. As it is a killer lineup and congrats to Christine and Chris for putting together a great conference. So until next week, from Kansas City my name is Sean Callanan from Sports Geek and I will speak to you then.

DJ Joel: Please leave a review on iTunes. Go to Sportsgeekhq.com/itunes. We will see you in Kansas City for SEAT 2013. You got to be there mate! Thanks for listening to the Sports Geek Podcast.

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Sean understands the sports digital landscape, that’s why he started Sports Geek.
Connecting sports, fans & sponsors using technology is his mission.
Grab Sports Geek Podcast from iTunes or Stitcher with guests from around the sports digital world.
You can hear him on radio on ABC Grandstand Breakfast with Francis Leach, SEN with Harf Time.
Send him a tweet @seancallanan, you'll find him looking for a signal at sporting events around the world.